Annika's Wedding Day-- October 21st, 2023

*All photography on this post was taken by Danielle Bullen, photographer extraordinaire, who gave us not only the gift of her artistry for the day, but along with it, her steadfast friendship and care. I just grabbed a slew of these photos all willy-nilly. For the rest, follow the link to her website.

**The venue was my grandpa's dairy barn, which my cousin and his family have converted into a beautiful wedding venue. Annika and Tim had their first dance in the hay mow I used to throw bales in as a teenager! My cousin and his wife were incredibly generous and let us use the barn and the renovated farmhouse (that my mom was born in) for the wedding weekend. 

I could write all evening, and it would still be too much and not enough. 

We worked day and night to get all the details in order-- finding a dress (secondhand all the way from Scotland!) and planning food and decorations and flowers. I ordered such a glut of things from the internet that, for the first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to be Grandma Owen, for whom normal life meant a package delivery every day of the week. I did my best to make this a Frugal Fancy-pants wedding, one that was lovely but didn't cost all of our limbs, which meant doing all that could be done ourselves. 

Even doing everything I could ahead of time, making flower-girl baskets and hundreds of favors and hundreds of lollipops, making seating charts and printouts and plans, I still had an all-nighter trying to finish everything. And I had a hoard of helpers at my side, to boot! Feeding almost 300 people was taken off my hands nearly entirely, as local family and friends who are family made three kinds of soup and a half dozen flavors of cookies, to the tune of gallons and gallons of soup and dozens upon dozens of cookies. Tim and some helpers spent hours moving chairs and scrubbing pigeon mess off of concrete floor and wooden pews two days before the wedding. My sister Becky left the barn around 2 o'clock in the morning, and Tim's sister Natalie stayed up half the night herself, tirelessly arranging the buckets of flowers I'd bought into artistic bouquets, boutonnieres, and table vases. Local folks who love Annika and us stepped up and worked alongside us from dawn until dusk, and then afterward into the dark. Many of you reading this were love and Christ to us. 

Guests shared with me later how much they enjoyed the beautiful decorations, delicious food, the robust and joyful singing of psalms, and, yes, even the lollipops. But none of it mattered.

One piece of the day etched into memory is the pure joy on Tim's and Annika's faces as she came down the aisle. Annika was so excited to see Tim that she accidentally left her gorgeous bouquet behind in the farmhouse. She smiled without ceasing, and by the end of the day, her face was sore from the unconscious compulsion of joy. God is good to give such a man as Tim to our family. The grief of missing is lessened knowing that her face looks just that joyful still when he walks in the door to greet her after a day at work. They've had deep joy and deep sorrow both in the last 20 months, chiefly the joy of welcoming their Glory-girl and the aching loss of Tim's most beloved Grampa Vernot and Annika's equally beloved Grandma Owen. God be with them, giving joy and courage in ease and in hardship alike, for many decades to come.